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The unfinished trial of Slobodan Milošević: Justice lost, history told
Vrkić, N.
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Citation for published version (APA):Vrkić, N. (2015). The unfinished trial of Slobodan Milošević: Justice lost, history told.
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…the law usually is an accomplice to ideology, sometimes an enemy of justice and always
the narrator of a series of complex and deeply ambiguous stories.
Gerry Simpson, The Law of War Crimes
Chapter III: The Ideology
Criminal investigations into the language of leaders attempt to uncover derogatory and racist
words that might represent prejudice or hatred toward members of a targeted enemy group. This
evidence is essential to revealing the state of mind of an accused, needed to establish criminality.
To prove a criminal case, both the words and deeds of an accused are equally important.
Although actus reus – the criminal act itself, such as killing or rape – is an essential starting
point for every criminal investigation, proving the criminality of a political leader focuses more
on mens rea, the criminal mind, which must be shown to have led to or accompanied the actus
reus. Throughout the Milošević trial, witnesses who were once close to or engaged in political
negotiations with him testified that there was often a discrepancy between Milošević’s words and
deeds. So, what were Milošević’s true intentions and why did he try to obscure his political
goals? Was it because he knew that the creation of a single state for all Serbs could be achieved
only through violence against non-Serbs?
Since 19th century, Greater Serbia ideology is associated with territorial expansionism,
advocating that the Serbian state be enlarged to the south (into Macedonia and Kosovo) and to
the west (into BiH and Croatia). Early proponents of a Greater Serbia aspired to expand Serbian
borders into Ottoman and then Habsburg territories – which had ethnically mixed populations
with large numbers of non-Serbs – and the Prosecution argued that this history of efforts to
enlarge Serbian territory was one of mass atrocities against those non-Serb populations. In
establishing Milošević’s criminal state of mind, it was essential for the Prosecution to present
evidence on his adoption of this ideology that has long inspired attempts by Serbian political
elites to create an ethnically-defined Serbian state; efforts known to frequently have been
accompanied by violence.315
315 A number of witnesses testified at the ICTY as to this history and ideology. The Prosecution called Audrey Budding as an expert witness on history, Renaud de la Brosse on political propaganda, and Ton Zwaan as an expert
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Greater Serbia Ideology and a History of Violence: From Terrorism to Mass Atrocities
Expert witnesses for both the Prosecution and Defence addressed the history of the Greater
Serbia concept. Prosecution Expert Witness on history Audrey Budding credited the term to
Serbian politician Ilija Garašanin (1812-1874), who wrote a short nationalistic manifesto in 1844
known as Načertanije (The Outline), which identified the borders of a future Serbian state.316
The document was kept secret until it was finally published in 1906.317 Since Garašanin’s time,
there has been much debate over his ideology and what the notion of Greater Serbia implies. Is it
a unified South Slavic state incorporating a large number of non-Serbs, or a Serbian national
state meant to unite Serbs and connect all predominantly Serb territories? In other words, does it
reflect Yugoslavism or Serb nationalism?
In his Opening Statement, Milošević asserted that the concept of Greater Serbia had been
invented for a propaganda campaign launched by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When Ottoman
territory conquered by Christian powers was redistributed in 1878 by the Congress of Berlin,
BiH became an Austro-Hungarian protectorate, to the great consternation of the adjacent
emerging Kingdom of Serbia.318 Between 1878 and 1914, the relationship between the Kingdom
of Serbia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire was dominated by a rivalry over BiH territory,
which worsened when Austro-Hungary annexed BiH in 1908. Milošević cited that rivalry as the
reason the Austro-Hungarian Empire had devised the “Greater Serbia” concept, in order to
accuse the Kingdom of Serbia of expansionism.319
Čedomir Popov, a Defence witness on the topic, similarly claimed that the concept of Greater
Serbia was a consequence of the power struggle for territory between the Austro-Hungarian
on genocide. The Defence called several expert witnesses as well: Slavenko Terzić, on the history of the Kosovo conflict; Kosta Mihailović, on Serbia’s economic disadvantages in Yugoslavia from 1918-1991; and Čedomir Popov, on Greater Serbia. The Defence also called other expert witnesses, such as historian Vasilije Krestić, who was set to testify on the history of genocide against Serbs in Croatia; and Kosta Čavoški, who wrote a report called “Budding vs. Budding” in direct response to the expert testimony of Prosecution witness Audrey Budding. They did not testify in the end, due to the premature conclusion of the trial. 316 Budding, Serbian Nationalism in the Twentieth Century, 3. 317 For example, see: Dušan T. Bataković “Ilija Garasanin’s Nacertanije: A Reassessment,” Balkanica XXV, no. 1 (1994): 157-183. The article was tendered into evidence as Exhibit P805. 318 The Principality of Serbia existed from 1812 to 1878, under nominal Ottoman rule. It gained full independence after formal recognition by the Berlin Congress in 1878, and was thereafter known as the Kingdom of Serbia until it joined a pan-Slavic state in 1918 at the end of World War I. 319 Trial Transcript, Defence Opening Statement (31 August 2004), 32193.
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monarchy and the Serbian kingdom. He testified that the “myth” of Greater Serbia ideology had
been fostered as a scare tactic, saying it:
...was nurtured and further developed after the 1878 Berlin Congress, acquiring the
character of a never-ending political and religious campaign. The aim of this
campaign and the creation of the myth was threefold; to prevent the creation of a
Serbian state within its national borders, to conceal the fact that Austria possessed
some of the Serbian and Balkan territories and aspired to others, and to open the
routes to a Catholic missionary campaign among the Orthodox population of
Southeastern Europe. No effort was spared to spread the myth about a Greater
Serbian threat...320
A number of Defence witnesses repeated the explanation Milošević and Popov offered for the
negative connotation attached to the term Greater Serbia, asserting it was a foreign invention
meant to discredit Serbia – an emerging political power in the late 19th century – and prevent its
westward expansion.321 Defence Expert Witness Kosta Mihailović also brought up the role of
two well-known Serbian socialists, Dimitrije Tucović (1881-1914) and Svetozar Marković
(1846-1876), who he claimed contributed to a negative appraisal of the term by applying it to
Serbian expansionist policies in the second half of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries,
and whose views he said were due to “unyielding” ideological positions that were “one-sided.”322
Čedomir Popov also claimed that Načertanije had not advocated aggression and therefore should
not be seen as having instigated violence.323 Instead, Popov argued, Garašanin’s plan focused on
integrating lands claimed by Serbia on linguistic and religious grounds – BiH, Northern Albania
(specifically Kosovo and Metohija), and Montenegro – allowing Serbia to unite all Serbs while
leaving the door open to other South Slavic nations, including Bulgarians as well as Croats from
320 Testimony of Čedomir Popov (9 December 2004), 34457. Popov also wrote an Expert Report that was later published as a book in 2007, in B/C/S. See: Čedomir Popov, Velika Srbija: Stvarnost i Mit (Novi Sad: Sremski Karlovci, 2007). For the text in English, see: Čedomir Popov, Greater Serbia – Reality and Myth, Expert Report, Exhibit D263a. 321 For example, see: Testimony of Mihailo Marković (17 November 2004), 33541. 322 Kosta Mihailović, Economic Aspects of the ‘Greater Serbian Policy’, Expert Report, Exhibit D265a, 12-13. Although Professor Mihailović was officially listed as an expert witness, the Prosecution considered him to be more of a fact witness, for Mihailović had participated in events of significant relevance to the planning and strategy of the conflicts. For discussion, also see: Testimony of Mihailo Marković (17 November 2004), 33541. 323 Testimony of Čedomir Popov (16 December 2004), 34590-34591. Also see: Bataković, “Ilija Garasanin’s Nacertanije: A Reassessment.”
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Slavonia, Croatia, and Dalmatia. According to Popov, Garašanin’s primary aim was to liberate
Serbs in the Balkans from Ottoman rule, invoking their “sacred historical right” based on the pre-
Ottoman legacy of the 14th century Serbian state under Tsar Dušan the Mighty.324
Asked by the Prosecution to comment on the proposition that a future Serbian state as envisaged
by Garašanin would have been based on historic, ethnic, religious, linguistic, and geostrategic
criteria and be led by a Serb dynasty, Popov replied that, indeed, Načertanije advocated the
national interest of Serbs, but he said that similar nationalist and irredentist325 conceptions
“prevailed throughout Europe in the 19th century” and that “Serbs also had the right to espouse
such an idea.”326 In his Expert Report, Popov characterised Greater Serbia ideology as a myth
that had been “nourished, fostered, and spread” to destabilise Serbia, which he claimed in court
was meant to enforce a stereotype against Serbs as hegemonic. When Milošević asked if he in
fact saw Serbia as a “victim nation and a victim state,” Popov said that he did.327 His answer
reflected the ideological framework of Serb victimhood by which Serb nationalist elites had
mobilised social action in Kosovo in the 1980s.
A History of Expansion of the Serbian State by Force, 1912-1941
The Balkan Wars, 1912-1913
Serbian state borders were redrawn twice during the Balkan Wars, waged in 1912 and 1913, in
which emerging Balkan states fought the Ottoman Empire. Serbia extended its borders south, to
Vardar Macedonia (a region now in northern Macedonia) – also known as Old Serbia because it
was part of the medieval Kingdom of Dušan the Mighty – and into Kosovo and parts of Sandžak.
These conquests meant that the Kingdom of Serbia incorporated large numbers of non-Serbs.328
In his Expert Report, Defence witness Kosta Mihailović wrote that Serbian socialist Dimitrije
Tucović had asserted at the time of the Balkan Wars that Serbia’s 1912 military incursion into
the northern parts of Albania proved it was trying to conquer that territory as well, with 324 Budding, Serbian Nationalism in the Twentieth Century, 12-13. 325 In Yugoslav political rhetoric, the term irredentism was distinguished from separatism. Irredentism has been associated with Kosovo Albanian nationalism and their alleged attempts to join Albania. Separatism has been associated with Slovenia, Croatia, and BiH and their attemps to break away from Yugoslavia. 326 Testimony of Čedomir Popov (15 December 2004), 34586. 327 Testimony of Čedomir Popov (16 December 2004), 34565-34566. 328 Budding, Serbian Nationalism in the Twentieth Century, 3-5.
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aspirations to gain an outlet to the Adriatic Sea. Mihailović contested this, saying that it was in
fact the threat of the creation of a Greater Albania that had spurred the start of the Balkan Wars
in the first place.329 But it wasn’t just the Albanians who had expansionist ideas, and the danger
of competing irredentist or separatist claims had been recognised in the late 19th century by
another Serbian socialist, Svetozar Marković, who drew attention to the hypocrisy of Serbia for
asserting the right to an exclusive state in the Balkans but denying that right to others. Marković
was also quoted by Mihailović in his Report, though Mihailović dismissed Marković’s concerns
by asserting that “it can be reasonably assumed that he did not know the real intentions of
[Serbian] policy.”330
The Serbian conquest of territory in Kosovo during the Balkan Wars involved atrocities
committed by Serbian and Montenegrin soldiers, which some observers saw as a systematic
attempt by the Serbian military to alter the demographic balance of the region in order to justify
the incorporation of Kosovo into the Serbian state.331 On this issue, Prosecution Expert Witness
Budding referred to the Carnegie Endowment’s 1914 Report of the International Commission to
Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars, which chronicled these atrocities:
Houses and whole villages reduced to ashes, unarmed and innocent populations
massacred en masse, incredible acts of violence, pillage and brutality of every kind
– such were the means which were employed and are still being employed by the
Serbo-Montenegrin soldiery, with a view to the entire transformation of the ethnic
character of regions inhabited exclusively by Albanians.332
Defence witness Čedomir Popov recognised that atrocities had been committed by Serbian
forces; but he contended that they were only in response to attacks by Albanian units, which he
claimed were motivated by the Albanian majority’s refusal to accept Serbian authority.333
Slavenko Terzić, who was called by the Defence as an Expert Witness on the history of Kosovo,
notably omitted any reference to the Balkan Wars in his Expert Report. Yet, this particular 329 Mihailović, Economic Aspects of the 'Greater Serbian Policy', 13-14. 330 Ibid., 13. 331 Budding, Serbian Nationalism in the Twentieth Century, 5. 332 George F. Kennan, The Other Balkan Wars: A 1913 Carnegie Endowment Inquiry in Retrospect (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment, 1993), 151, quoted in Budding, Serbian Nationalism in the Twentieth Century, footnote 21. 333 Testimony of Čedomir Popov (16 December 2004), 34601-34602.
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episode in the history of Kosovo and Serbia is undeniably significant because, in 1913 – after
almost 500 years – Serbia repossessed Kosovo from the retreating Ottoman Army and
incorporated its territory into the expanding Kingdom of Serbia. In the Prosecution’s cross-
examination, Terzić was asked why he hadn’t mentioned these historical events, including mass
atrocities committed against Kosovo Albanians by Serb soldiers, in his Report. Terzić accepted
that the Carnegie Endowment’s accounting of the extent of the atrocities was probably accurate,
but said that they were the expected consequences of war. He rejected the Prosecution’s
suggestion that these atrocities resulted from a Serbian government plan to ethnically cleanse
that territory, concluding that such a plan would have been implemented if it existed.334 Terzić
also failed to mention the Serbian government’s Kosovo colonisation programme in his Report,
though it was significant for having offered certain economic privileges to Serbs who were
willing to settle in Kosovo after 1913. As Audrey Budding explained, the purpose of the
programme was to change the ethnic composition of Kosovo in favour of Serbs; but the scheme
never really worked and Kosovo Albanians maintained a majority.335
The First World War, the London Treaty of 1915, and a Greater Serbia
In questioning Čedomir Popov, the Prosecution pressed the matter that some of the first Greater
Serbia ideologues had advocated violence for the purpose of unifying Serb-claimed territories,
asking about the early 20th-century organisation known as both “Unification or Death”
(Ujedinjenje ili smrt) and the “Black Hand” (Crna ruka). Popov corroborated that, indeed, a
member of the organisation had assassinated Aleksandar Obrenović – the last king of the
Obrenović Dynasty – in 1903. Obrenović was known for having cultivated a good relationship
with Austro-Hungary, then seen by Serb nationalists as the major obstacle to territorial expansion
and a specific challenge to territorial aspirations in BiH. The same group was also involved in
the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914.336
Popov, who had initially rejected the Prosecution’s proposition that Greater Serbia ideology was
linked to violence, was challenged to admit that terrorism had indeed marked early attempts at
334 Testimony of Slavenko Terzić (9 December 2004), 34374-34376. Also see: Slavenko Terzić, Kosovo and Metohija in the 20th Century, Expert Report, Exhibit D259a. 335 Budding, Serbian Nationalism in the Twentieth Century, 5. 336 Testimony of Čedomir Popov (16 December 2004), 34592-34593.
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Serbian irridentism. He agreed that the assassinations of King Aleksandar and Archduke Franz
Ferdinand represented a shift toward support for a more violent approach by the Black Hand,
which he described as a paramilitary organisation comprised of active army officers of the
Serbian Royal Army. The objective of the group, he said, was Serbia’s unification with Serbs
from Bosnia, an aim which he claimed was fully supported by Bosnian Serbs.337 Popov denied
that the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in 1914 was an expression of Greater Serbia
ambitions, though, asserting that Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Muslims were members alongside
Bosnian Serbs of Young Bosnia (Mlada Bosna), the organisation that actually carried out the
assassination. According to Popov, Young Bosnia representatives sought support from the Black
Hand when they were refused assistance from the Serbian government.338 The assassination was
of course seen as triggering the outbreak of the First World War, during which the Austro-
Hungarian Empire disintegrated and after which BiH became part of a newly formed Kingdom
of Yugoslavia.
The Defence position was that Serbs had never aspired to form a Greater Serbia, and had even
rejected an enlarged state when it was offered to them in the 1915 London Treaty, preferring
instead to form a joint state with the Slovenes and Croats. Milošević introduced this notion in his
Opening Statement in August 2004, stressing that the Serbs had rejected the London Treaty
despite promises by the Allies to expand Serbia to include territories in BiH and Croatia:
To make the irony and absurdity even greater and to make the lies and injustice
against the Serbian people even worse...it is well known that in 1915, the allies of
Serbia, in the so-called London Treaty, offered Serbia, after winning the war, an
extension of its territory to Bosnia and Herzegovina, parts of Dalmatia, parts of
Slavonia, and so on and so forth. There are documents to show all this. But Serbia
did not do this. Serbia instead embraced and espoused Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes
alike from the former territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and this is how
the Kingdom of Croats, Serbs and Slovenes was created, later on to be called
Yugoslavia. This option taken by the Serbian state to create a common state of
Yugoslavia rather than their own state provided protection to our Croatian and
337 Ibid., 34593-34594. 338 Ibid.
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Slovenian brothers. We protected them from territorial fragmentation. And also,
after they had been part of a defeated state, they became part of the winning
camp.339
Popov contextualised the London Treaty historically and politically, saying that Austro-Hungary
was the enemy state and its territory had been offered to Italy by the British in order to get Italy
involved in the war on the side of the Allies. According to Popov, Serbia was not involved at all
in these secret negotiations; but the British had agreed with Italy to the division of a considerable
part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with the rest going to either Serbia or a common Serb,
Croat, and Slovene state.340 Further, Popov testified, there were two London Treaty Maps, the
second of which dealt specifically with Serbia. This second map captured changes made to the
first, he said, and marked the territories offered up to Serbia, including Macedonian territory, as
compensation for the fact that Serbia had lost Dalmatia to Italy.341 Popov explained that Serbia
was also offered Bosnia, Eastern Slavonia, Bačka, Srem (Syrmia), and the part of Dalmatia from
north of Split up to the Planck peninsula. He commented that this was more territory than Serbia
ever considered rightfully due.342
Map 2: London Treaty Map showing land offered to Serbia in 1905 by the Allied Forces
339 Trial Transcript, Defence Opening Statement (31 August 2004), 32193. 340 Testimony of Čedomir Popov (15 December 2004), 34507-34508. 341 Ibid., 34511-34512. 342 Ibid., 34513.
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The First Yugoslavia or Greater Serbia?
The contention of the Defence was that the London Treaty could have secured what was, in
effect, a Greater Serbia, but that the Kingdom of Serbia had rejected this prospect because it
chose instead to liberate Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs who lived under Austro-Hungarian rule.
Popov testified that Serbia’s war aims had been laid out in the 1914 Niš Declaration and
favoured the creation of a common Yugoslav state.343 However, Prosecution Expert Witness
Budding offered a different interpretation of these events, saying that Serbian political elites in
fact saw a common state as an expanded Serbian state, not as a Yugoslav state, which was then a
fundamentally new concept. Budding testified that, at the time, the notions of Greater Serbia and
Yugoslavia were synonymous, at least in the minds of political decision makers. According to
her, the Niš Declaration was a continuation of Serbia’s pursuit of the unification of all Serbs.344
Croat representatives in the negotiations that preceded the creation of the first Yugoslav state
advocated for a confederation; though they eventually compromised with the Serbs and
established the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes under the Serb royal dynasty of
Karađorđević.345 As Audrey Budding noted, there were Serbian intellectuals who also saw the
importance of making a distinction between a common state and the expansion of Serbian
domination, and pushed for a federal state that would decentralise power.346 In 1929, the
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes changed its name, becoming the Kingdom of
Yugoslavia, or the First Yugoslavia. The state was troubled by inter-ethnic relations and growing
Serbo-Croatian conflict. Still, Serbia did engage in political dialogue with Croats and Slovenes
and treated them as equal nations; but its relationship with other ethnic groups – the Bosnian
Muslims, the Macedonians, and the Kosovo Albanians – remained problematic.
An extreme example of how some Serbs felt the non-Serb population should be dealt with was
found in yet another document that remained hidden away from the public for years, at the
Institute for Military History in Belgrade, titled “The Resettlement of the Arnauts” (Iseljavanje
343 Ibid., 34514. 344 Testimony of Audrey Budding (24 July 2003), 24930. 345 For discussion on the creation of the First Yugoslavia – initially known as The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and re-named The Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929 – see: Dragnich, The First Yugoslavia; and Dimitrije Đorđević, ed., The Creation of Yugoslavia, 1914-1918 (Santa Barbara, CA: Clio Books, 1980). 346 Budding, Serbian Nationalism in the Twentieth Century, 9.
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Arnauta).347 The term ‘Arnauts’ was used to denote ethnic Albanians, and the document
recommended moving the Albanian population to Turkey and paying the Turkish government as
compensation for resettlement costs. The proposal was written by Vasa Ćubrilović, then a junior
historian who was known for his Young Bosnia membership at the time of the assassination of
Franz Ferdinand. Ćubrilović wrote the document when he was an Assistant Professor at the
University of Belgrade and presented it at a session of the Serbian Cultural Club in 1937. The
Club was an establishment for the elite, including prominent Serb politicians, high-ranking
military personnel, and intellectuals with considerable influence over politics and public opinion.
The Second World War and the Historical Legacy of Moljević’s “Homogeneous Serbia”
The disintegration of the First Yugoslavia in 1941 and its partition among the Third Reich, Italy,
and neighbouring Nazi satellite states – such as Hungary and Bulgaria – redrew the map of
Yugoslavia considerably. Croatia was rewarded with more territory for its alliance with the Third
Reich, extending its borders to the east by annexing BiH and Syrmia and reaching as far as the
suburban town of Zemun in the vicinity of Belgrade. The Serbs, on the other hand, were left by
Nazi Germany with a Serbian state that was much smaller than the new Independent State of
Croatia (Nezavasina država Hrvatska, or NDH). The NDH was led by the extreme right Ustasha
movement, which started exterminating Serbs, Roma, Jews, and Communists in the Jasenovac
concentration camp in order to change the ethnic composition of the NDH in favour of Croats.
In both Nazi Serbia and the NDH, several Serb Chetnik guerrilla units were active. The Chetnik
guerrillas under the command of Colonel Draža Mihailović were considered by Allied Forces to
be a royal army and were seen as an official resistance movement until 1943, when Tito’s
victorious communist guerrillas, known as the Partisans, became the only recognised resistance
movement on the territory of the former Kingdom of Yugoslavia. One of the ideologues of the
Chetnik guerrilla movement was Stevan Moljević (1888-1959), a lawyer from Banja Luka who
was a member of the Serbian Cultural Club. In 1941, he authored a pamphlet titled
“Homogeneous Serbia” (Homogena Serbia), which revitalised Greater Serbia ideology in the
political and military context of the Second World War and the changing European State System.
347 Vasa Ćubrilović, “The Resettlement of Arnauts,” Exhibit P799a.
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Map 3: Moljević’s Map of Greater Serbia. From Izvori Velikosrpske Agresije, page 146, Exhibit P807.
Asked by Milošević to comment on Moljević’s contribution to the Chetnik movement and
Greater Serbia ideology, Čedomir Popov testified that it was Ustasha terror against Serbs in the
NDH that led to the Chetnik movement. He described the Chetniks as an incoherent group, but
said that, for some time, Draža Mihailović’s movement indeed seemed to have adopted
Moljević’s ideas. According to Popov, Moljević envisaged a Greater Serbia that would
encompass even more territory than offered by the London Treaty in 1915:
...Moljević envisaged that this should be a homogenous Serbia from a national point of
view along the following lines: The non-Serb population will be allowed to leave on their
own or will be exchanged for those Serbs which remain outside this Greater Serbia. This
programme was rejected by the Chetniks themselves. It was revised at the so-called Sveti
Sava Congress in the village of Bar in January 1944 when, under pressure exerted by the
Allies and because of the general feeling that prevailed among the Allies, a decision was
made to create a federative Yugoslavia with Serbia at its centre.348
348 Testimony of Čedomir Popov (15 December 2004), 34524-34525.
89
The historical importance of the Moljević map for the development of Greater Serbia ideology is
in its demarcation of a Western border running from the Northern Croatian town of Virovitica,
through Karlovac, to Karlobag in the South of Croatia. The Prosecution asked Popov to comment
on Moljević’s map, and in particular on the proposed boundary, which would have left Croatia as
a very narrow strip of territory beyond the projected Virovitica-Karlovac-Karlobag (V-K-K) line.
Popov asserted that this border was not accepted by all Serbs, 349 and indeed, that’s possible; but
the V-K-K line grew to be seen by many as a potent and enduring representation of Greater
Serbia ideology and proved relevant to the war in Croatia in 1991.
The SANU Memorandum and Serbian State Ideology
In 1985, Serbian political leaders approved a proposal by members of the Serbian Academy of
Sciences and Arts (SANU) that they contribute to solving the profound social, economic, and
political crises facing Yugoslavia and the Republic of Serbia at the time. Stambolić consented to
the endeavour because he firmly believed that science should be part of those efforts. The SANU
leadership organised several expert teams, each of which analysed different aspects of the crisis
and made proposals for how to resolve them.350 The product of this work – the SANU
Memorandum – took Stambolić by surprise, and he qualified it as an “obituary for
Yugoslavia.”351 He felt that the recommendations advanced in the document were contrary to the
interests of Serbs in Yugoslavia, whom he felt were best served by a common state. Stambolić
was one of the first communist officials to criticise the Memorandum in public, warning against
the dangers of attempts to “unite” Serbs on the ruins of Yugoslavia, and saying presciently that
this would lead to conflict with other Yugoslav nations and with the rest of the world.
In the months following a ‘leaked’ disclosure of the Memorandum in 1986, it was the topic of
discussion at all Party forums. Unlike fellow politicians Stambolić and Dragiša Pavlović,
Milošević remained silent; he was diligent about not speaking against the Memorandum in
public, though he did allow for some criticism of it by others in less public settings.352 And while
349 Testimony of Čedomir Popov (16 December 2004), 34609-34610. 350 Stambolić, “The Memorandum, In Memoriam to Yugoslavia,” in Put u bespuće, Exhibit P800a, 2. Also see: Budding, Serbian Nationalism in the Twentieth Century, 53. 351 Stambolić, Put u bespuće, 1. 352 Budding, Serbian Nationalism in the Twentieth Century, 58.
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he never commented on the contents of the Memorandum itself, Milošević defended the
Academy on a number of different occasions, saying that it was only natural that an institution of
the highest intellectual and moral standards would deal with solving complex issues like the
Yugoslav crisis.353
The Prosecution mentioned the SANU Memorandum only briefly in its Opening Statement,
referring to the threat it had alleged faced Serbs in Kosovo and Croatia and how that rhetoric
contributed to creating fear among Serbs.354 But the Memorandum kept cropping up in evidence
as the trial went on, progressively revealing its importance as an apparent blueprint for the
political programme that had been implemented by Milošević. The central arguments in the
Memorandum were based on the notion that economic and political systems had suffered
negative consequences as a result of the 1974 Yugoslav Constitution, by which the Federation
had become a confederation. According to the Memorandum’s authors, the 1974 Constitution
made the Yugoslav political system “a textbook case of inefficiency” and they argued that the
only way out of the crisis was to abandon the political and economic systems that were based on
that Constitution.355 They also identified three additional issues confronting Serbia in the
Federation: its economic underdevelopment, its unresolved relationship with the state and the
provinces, and “the genocide in Kosovo.”356 These and other very serious charges painted a dim
picture of life for Serbs and included accusations that the Serb population in Kosovo and Croatia
had been threatened by “physical, political, legal, and cultural genocide” that had directly
affected the ethnic balance in the Yugoslav Federation.357 The conclusion of the Memorandum’s
authors was that the root of both the Yugoslav crisis and the Serbian crisis lay in Yugoslavia’s
decentralisation. They called for transforming Yugoslavia and referred, though only in passing,
to the possibility of its collapse.358
The Memorandum’s one-sided emphasis on Serbian victimisation was reflected in all forms of
public debate in the years that followed. But Prosecution Expert Budding suggested that the
content of the Memorandum was not its most relevant feature; she considered it most significant
353 Ibid., 37. See footnote 75. 354 Trial Transcript, Prosecution Opening Statement (12 February 2002), 17. 355 Budding, Serbian Nationalism in the Twentieth Century, 54. 356 Mihailović and Krestić, Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 119. 357 Ibid, 128. 358 Budding, Serbian Nationalism in the Twentieth Century, 55-56.
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for the way in which it had been introduced to the public and how it had polarised Serbian
political leadership.359 Budding also drew attention to the fact that, unlike previous critics of the
1974 Constitution, the authors of the SANU Memorandum catalogued pre-existing grievances
together with one important and groundbreaking new inference – that Serbs might be able to do
without Yugoslavia.360
Authors of the Memorandum Appear as Defence Witnesses
In his Opening Statement in February 2002, Milošević said that the indictments against him
accused not just him but the whole Serb nation, beginning with the Serbian intelligentsia and
members of the SANU. He defended the SANU and the Memorandum, saying that Serbian
academics had responsibly and authoritatively described the situation in Kosovo.361 Though he
had hardly ever spoken publicly of the Memorandum and it was difficult to prove that he had
even read it, its role in shaping his ideology became clear when Milošević called some of its
most prominent authors to the stand for his Defence. The fact that they were asked to appear
spoke volumes despite his reticence.362 Professor Kosta Mihailović, an economist who was
among the Memorandum’s authors, was an advisor to Milošević at all major negotiations in the
early 1990s; he testified as an expert witness on the topic of Serbia’s economic sluggishness in
the First Yugoslavia (1918-1941), and also about the Memorandum and Milošević’s attitude
toward it. In 1993, Mihailović had co-authored a book titled Memorandum of the Serbian
Academy of Sciences and Arts: Answers to Criticisms in which he and Vasilije Krestić – a
Professor of History and fellow SANU member who was responsible for the part of the
Memorandum that addressed the history of genocide against Serbs – explained why and how the
Memorandum was written. While Mihailović confirmed in his testimony that there was indeed a
link between the ideas in the Memorandum and the views of Milošević on legal, political, and
economic aspects of the crisis, in the book, he and Krestić denied that this was anything but
coincidental:
359 Ibid., 57. 360 Ibid., 58. 361 Defence Opening Statement (14 February 2002), 247-248. 362 SANU Members and Memorandum authors Mihailo Marković and Kosta Mihailović both appeared, as well as Slavenko Terzić, Smilja Avramov, and Čedomir Popov; Vasilije Krstić was scheduled to testify, and his Expert Report was already was filed, before Milošević died.
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The insinuation that Slobodan Milošević was carrying out a national agenda
contained in the Memorandum is a pure fabrication. This claim was inspired by the
course of events and the anti-Serbian propaganda’s need to keep the official and
unofficial organs of Serbia under a constant barrage of accusations.... Another
charge against the Memorandum is that it served as a springboard for Slobodan
Milošević’s policies. There is nothing strange in the fact that he may have seen
some of the problems and solutions in the same or similar light as the document in
question. It is more likely that he did not learn about the existence of these
problems for the first time from the Memorandum, but that he found in it
confirmation for some of his own personal observations.363
The booklet also shed light on the few criticisms Milošević had actually expressed about the
Memorandum:
...some facts suggest that he was critical of the authors of the Memorandum more
out of compliance with the party discipline than out of personal conviction. During
the political witch hunt in Serbia, it was noted that his criticisms were rare and
relatively mild. After assuming the key political position in Serbia, finding himself
able to influence the direction of political action, he stopped the campaign against
the Memorandum. The importance of this is not diminished by the fact that he had
stopped the attacks against the Serbian Academy as part of the democratisation of
society, an official change of heart toward the intelligentsia, freedom of speech and
the introduction of a multiparty system.364
The publication – or rather, public disclosure – of the Memorandum had been the subject of
controversy itself. The authors maintained that it was leaked without their knowledge. Others
claimed that it was deliberately leaked in order to generate interest among Serbs for the topics it
discussed. A second controversy centred on the version of the text that was published. Was the
1986 publication an unfinished version as the authors claimed? Or was this label used as a way
to brush off and deter criticism by claiming that this first published version was not the final,
authorised text?
363 Mihailović and Krestić, Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 80-81. 364 Ibid., 81.
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Kosta Mihailović addressed this point in his testimony, saying that uproar over the Memorandum
was unjustified, and all the more so because the version that was leaked was unedited. He
explained that there were initially twenty copies printed, of which sixteen were meant for the
contributors and members of the commission, along with copies for each of three consultants –
Dobrica Ćosić, Ljuba Tadić, and Jovan Đorđević – leaving one copy undistributed.365 Mihailović
stressed that this unauthorised draft of the text was not approved as the final version.
In response, the Prosecution produced an analysis that compared the leaked “unauthorised”
version from 1986 with the official version published in Memorandum of the Serbian Academy
of Sciences and Arts: Answers to Criticisms seven years later. Only six small differences existed
between the two, and mostly in language, not in substance.366 Mihailović readily accepted the
Prosecution’s findings and stated that he was personally aware of only one change in the section
on economics that he authored, which appeared to be the result of a typing error. He admitted
that if there were any differences between the two versions, they could be only minor. On the
question of the leak, he insisted that the document had been leaked without the authors’
involvement, and that their intention was never to make it public.367 Mihailović attributed the
leak to Professor Jovan Đorđević’s son-in law, a journalist at the daily Večernje Novosti who
allegedly spotted the draft text at Đorđević’s house and published it in the newspaper.368 This
explanation is unlikely, though, as it was quite inconceivable in the communist system that any
journalist would dare, or be able, to publish such an explosive text without consent of their
editor-in-chief and the backing of at least a handful of politicians. Both the political system and
the media were tightly controlled by the League of Communists.
The publication of the Memorandum led to a buying frenzy, with photocopies sold at every street
corner in Belgrade. The Prosecution suggested that this leak had been manipulated and compared
the clandestine nature of it to the treatment of Načertanije, which was written in 1844 but kept
secret until it was published for general consumption for the first time in 1906. But Mihailović
rejected the Prosecution’s suggestion that secrecy had helped generate popular interest in either
365 Testimony of Kosta Mihailović (17 December 2004), 34749-34751. 366 Ibid., 34748-34749 and 34751. 367 Ibid., 34751-34753. 368 Ibid., 34751-34752.
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of those documents.369 He insisted that the Memorandum was meant to be a non-public
document, written to animate the political establishment.370
In his Expert Report, Prosecution Expert Witness on propaganda Renaud de la Brosse qualified
the publishing of the Memorandum as a “deliberate leak” and suggested that its appearance in a
daily newspaper in several instalments could not have occurred without the approval of at least
some members of the LC.371 Just how broad support for the Memorandum was in Serbia became
apparent at the Eighth Session of the Central Committee, held in September 1987, when it
divided the Serbian leadership into Stambolić and Milošević blocs. A majority of delegates
supported Milošević against Stambolić and Dragiša Pavlović, the two most vocal critics of the
Memorandum, and the standoff that ensued exposed proponents and opponents of a new policy
course.372 The wave of political purges that followed allowed Milošević to quickly rid the
government of anyone who did not readily accept this new political direction.373
The Influence of the SANU Memorandum on Post-Communist Serbian State Ideology
The SANU Memorandum reflected criticism that had been expressed by Serbian elites since the
adoption of the 1974 SFRY Constitution, which was seen by some as disadvantageous to Serbia
because it partitioned the republic into three political-administrative parts by making the
provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina federal units. To contextualise the aims of the 1974
Constitution, Audrey Budding explained that in the 1950s and 1960s, Serbia had dominated the
Kosovo political scene. At the time, Aleksandar Ranković, a Serbian communist functionary
who held significant influence, made centralisation of the Federation and of Serbia a dominant
political goal. Ranković had risen to the highest political ranks by serving as the first Head of the
Communist State Security Service (UDBA). Even when he moved on to more visible political
functions – making an impressive political career in post-WWII Yugoslavia by becoming Vice-
President of the Federation – he continued to control the Secret Service. Ranković was
eventually dismissed from the Party in 1966 for, among other things, disloyalty to Tito and
369 Ibid., 34758-34759. 370 Ibid., 34753. 371 Renaud de la Brosse, Political Propaganda and the Plan to Create a “State for all Serbs”: Consequences of Using the Media for Ultra-Nationalist Ends, Expert Report, January 2003, Exhibit P446.2, 34 and 38. 372 Jović, Knjiga o Miloševiću, 9-10. 373 Ibid., 20.
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espousing Serbian unitarism. He was accused of abusing the power he had over the security
services, including by allegedly putting Tito himself under surveillance, as well as for unlawful
use of the police in Kosovo. Some of his contemporaries later claimed that Ranković had been
loyal to Tito but had gotten himself into trouble trying to secure his position as Tito's heir.
Nonetheless, Ranković was labelled a Stalinist, a centralist, and a Serb nationalist, and the post-
Ranković period brought democratisation and decentralisation of the Party and the state, with
changes in the balance of power in Kosovo in favour of its Kosovo Albanian majority.374
Addressing the criticism by Serbian intellectual elites of the Constitution of 1974, Budding
explained that the first changes to the status of Kosovo and Vojvodina came with three sets of
constitutional amendments passed between 1968 and 1971, in which Serbia’s autonomous
provinces were given greater independence from Serbia and greater decision-making power at
the federal level. The most radical of these changes were passed in 1971, when a twenty-three
member collective federal presidency was introduced, with three representatives from each
republic and two from each province, and Tito as the 23rd member. The 1974 Constitution
reduced that number to nine: one representative from each republic and province, and Tito as the
ninth member.375 The composition of the Presidency changed once again in 1980, after Tito’s
death, to an eight-member body, since no one replaced Tito as the singular head of state.
Serbian communist liberals led by Marko Nikezić and Latinka Perović, who were in power until
1972, welcomed decentralisation. Still, many Serbian intellectuals and sitting communist
politicians resisted the changes. According to Budding, there were two groups of opponents to
decentralisation: Yugoslav unitarists were ardent Yugoslavists who saw decentralisation as
weakening the original Yugoslav concept; and the ‘particularists’ had been early proponents of
Yugoslavism but sought unity in Serbdom when they felt a common state was being undermined.
This latter group remained preoccupied with the unity of the Serbs, rejecting the idea that they
should be divided among different federal units, and began raising concerns about the rights of
Serbs outside Serbia.376 One of the most articulate critics of decentralisation was Dobrica Ćosić,
who was still a member of the Party and of the communist establishment at the time. When Ćosić
374 Ibid. 375 Ibid., 21-22. 376 Ibid., 32-33.
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became marginalised for his criticism of decentralisation, he moved his activities to the Serbian
Literary Cooperative, the so-called Zadruga, of which he was elected president.377
The most serious and explicitly political condemnation of the decentralisation amendments came
from the Law Faculty of the University of Belgrade. At a Faculty session in March 1971,
Serbia’s most authoritative legal experts articulated their criticism in a public discussion,
concluding that after the adoption of the amendments, Yugoslavia would no longer exist as a
state. Some participants called on Serbs, in Serbia and beyond, to look to their own interests,
alluding to a post-Yugoslav era.378 More severe criticism included the claim by philosopher
Mihailo Đurić that “in the name of national equality several independent and even opposing
national states had already been established on Yugoslavia’s territory.”379 Yugoslav authorities
responded with repression and did not resolve the issue, which Budding called a missed
opportunity.380
In 1977, the Serbian Presidency commissioned an analysis of the Constitution and its impact on
Serbia, presented in March of that year and dubbed the Blue Book (Plava knjiga) because of its
blue cover page.381 The Blue Book was never officially discussed by the Party or made public
due to its explicit criticism of the implementation of the 1974 Federal Constitution.382 It stated
that Serbia had been divided into three separate political, legal, and economic entities since each
province, like all the republics, had its own constitution, presidency, government, and supreme
court. The analysis emphasised the procedural difficulties of passing or implementing laws that
applied to the whole republic, and drew attention to the political asymmetry that resulted from
the fact that republic-level organs were theoretically empowered to enact measures for the entire
republic but were in practice limited to sovereignty over Serbia proper, i.e. excluding Kosovo
and Vojvodina. Further, representatives of the two provinces took part in decision-making
processes and bodies of the republic, while there were no representatives of the republic in the
decision-making organs of the provinces.383
377 Ibid., 35-36. 378 Ibid. 379 Ibid. 380 Ibid., 39. 381 Ibid., 44. 382 Ibid. 383 Ibid., 44-45.
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The authors of the Blue Book avoided nationalist language and, according to Budding, offered
their most extreme statements in its conclusion, where a lack of cooperation between Serbia’s
republican and provincial bodies was said to be adversely affecting the unity of Serbian national
culture and identity, and the question was raised as to whether Serbs were being allowed to
exercise their historical right to a national state in the Yugoslav framework, as stipulated by the
1974 Constitution.384 Although the Blue Book was never explicitly adopted by activists in the
1980s, Budding noted that similar rhetoric cropped up again in that decade, creating common
ground for cooperation between Serbia’s politicians and opposition intellectuals.385 And indeed,
contrary to the culture of a one-party system, various petitions in the 1980s demanded protection
of the rights of Serbs in Kosovo.386
One such petition, made public in January 1986 and signed by 212 Belgrade intellectuals,
promoted the idea that Serbs were being victimised.387 Among other things, the petition said that
Kosovo Albanians had been driving Serbs out of Kosovo for three centuries. Although the ethnic
composition in Kosovo did change over those centuries, the number of migrations tied to the
20th century was exaggerated in the petition text, as were their causes; but the claims presented
in the petition portended the economic and political arguments that would be expressed in the
SANU Memorandum, published later that year.
The petition’s core assertion about the risk to Serbs in Kosovo was rooted in the fact that the
percentage of Serbs and Montenegrins in Kosovo had fallen from 27% in the four censuses after
the Second World War to just under 15% in 1981.388 Serb nationalist activists saw this
emigration pattern to be the result of a federal policy that favoured Kosovo Albanians and
discriminated against Serbs in the province; and also frequently pointed to high birth rates among
Kosovo Albanians as evidence of a ‘special war’ waged against the Serbs and meant to change
the demography of Kosovo. But this argument failed to account for some significant
demographic, social, and cultural differences between Kosovo Albanians and Kosovo Serbs. For
384 Ibid., 45-46. 385 Ibid. 386 There were three important petitions that mobilized public opinion in Serbia in favour of Serbs in Kosovo. Petitions in 1983 and 1986 were authored by Kosovo Serbs and, in January 1986, a petition was signed by 212 Serbian intellectuals before it was sent to the Yugoslav and Serbian parliaments. See: Ibid., 50-51. 387 Budding, Serbian Nationalism in the Twentieth Century, 51. 388 Ibid.
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example, in rural areas where Kosovo Albanians were already a natural majority, women
generally did not work, leading somewhat automatically to higher birth rates among Kosovo
Albanians than among Serbs, who lived predominantly in towns.389 Nevertheless, the petition
asserted that emigrations of Serbs and Montenegrins had been the result of intimidation and
violence that was meant to create an “ethnically pure” Kosovo. The word “genocide” was also
deployed, coupled with the claim that it could not be stopped without making profound social
and political changes throughout the country.390
The views expressed in court by Defence Expert Witness Slavenko Terzić echoed the arguments
articulated in the 1970s and 1980s by his fellow Serbian intellectuals and academics.391 The
SANU Memorandum had effectively synthesised and aggregated several strains of complaints,
grievances, criticisms, and arguments, and had given them a new legitimacy in the post-Tito era.
Its authors, ostensibly offering solutions, were responding to deep political, economic, inter-
ethnic, and social crises that had been unfolding in the Yugoslav Federation since the late 1970s;
yet, they seemed interested primarily in the status of Serbia and of Serbs in other republics, and
they concluded that the most expedient solution was a revocation of the autonomy of the two
Serbian provinces.392 Even Vasa Ćubrilović, who authored “The Resettlement of the Arnauts” in
1937 and who was himself a member of the SANU, had criticised the recommendations of the
Memorandum, saying that the authors had spent years analysing the maps of Bosnia, trying to
discover how to connect Serb lands from Belgrade via BiH to the Croatian town of Karlovac.393
The Principle of Self-determination as an Element of Milošević’s Greater Serbia Designs
As a vocal advocate of the principle of self-determination, Milošević exposed himself to a
contradiction that has never really been resolved. In court, the debate over the concept of self-
determination developed on two tracks, based on different applications of the term in the post-
Yugoslav space. Serbs and Serbia had applied a right of self-determination to peoples, or the
right of a nation of people to territorial autonomy. Slovenia and Croatia, along with the
international community, had instead applied the self-determination principle to the republics, 389 Ibid. 51-52. 390 Ibid., 50 391 See: Testimony of Slavenko Terzić (6,7, and 9 December 2004). 392 Budding, Serbian Nationalism in the Twentieth Century, 55. 393 Stambolić, “The Memorandum, In Memoriam to Yugoslavia,” in Put u bespuće, 8. Vasa Ćubrilović died in 1990.
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meaning in practical terms that the republics would become independent within their existing
borders after the disintegration of the SFRY. The Prosecution argued that the Serbian insistence
on self-determination of peoples over republics inherently envisioned a Serbia made much
larger, and it framed attempts to unify all Serbs by forcibly redrawing republican borders on the
premise of Serb self-determination as the de facto creation of a Greater Serbia.
There was no evidence that Milošević had ever actually used the term ‘Greater Serbia’ to express
his political objectives or war goals; and, recognizing that the term lacks a universally agreed
definition, the Prosecution exercised considerable caution in applying it, instead using “de facto
Greater Serbia” to describe Milošević’s objectives.394 Indeed, intercepted telephone
conversations involving Milošević and Karadžić in 1991 showed they were both aware of the
negative connotations surrounding the term and preferred instead to use more descriptive
language to identify the form of a future Serb state. Karadžić, for instance, complained to fellow
Bosnian Serb Anđelko Grahovac that Serbs in Croatia needed to be more careful about making
explicit statements that they wanted to join Serbia because it might sound too much like they
were talking about a Greater Serbia.395 Milošević also warned Karadžić about avoiding public
reminders of historical efforts to achieve a Serbian state, telling him in September 1991 to
remove a reference to Serbia’s 1914 borders from a speech.396
But Greater Serbia ideology was clearly at the heart of Serb territorial designs in the 1990s.
Discussing a common political future and the “regionalisation” or “cantonisation” of BiH,
Karadžić told Milošević about a conversation he had with a French official who had remarked
that compromise wasn’t being reached on the issue of Bosnia; Karadžić had replied that anything
but a Greater Serbia would be a compromise for Serbs.397 And in a 1992 discussion with a
Serbian politician, Karadžić said that the goal was not Greater Serbia per se, but that existing
borders were unacceptable because they divided the Serbs in Croatia and BiH. Further, echoing
the victim-hero complex modelled by Serbian intellectuals, he insisted that Serbs “were not the
394 For example, see: Testimony of Major General Aleksandar Vasiljević (17 February 2003), 16224. 395 Intercept of Conversation between Radovan Karadžić and Anđelko Grahovac, 24 June 1991, Exhibit P613.12a, 4. 396 Intercept of Conversation between Slobodan Milošević and Radovan Karadžić, 20 September 1991, Exhibit P613.70a, 1. 397 Intercept of Conversation between Slobodan Milošević and Radovan Karadžić, 19 September 1991, Exhibit P613.67a, 5.
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cause of the war conflicts” and had “never done anything but fight for a democratic and peaceful
resolution.”398
When the Prosecution questioned Defence witness Čedomir Popov on whether violent
connotations associated with Greater Serbia ideology had prevented people from espousing it
publicly, he continued to deny that it had ever been anything more than a fabrication. He also
claimed that what several Prosecution witnesses had described were not Serb aspirations for a
Greater Serbia and said that Yugoslavia was a country of all South Slavs, not just Serbs. As the
Prosecution pressed, Popov asked agitatedly just how small Serbia would have to be to avoid
being called Greater Serbia.399
Still, while Greater Serbia ideology has been cast in different forms by political and intellectual
elites in Serbia throughout the 20th century, repeated failures to realise an expanded Serbian
state have never led to an abandonment of the underlying ideology. On the contrary, after each
failure, new opportunities to reinvent the ideology have always been based on the same or
similar principles but adapted to new political circumstances. Milošević’s interpretation of
Greater Serbia ideology was analysed in court, and yet the term ‘Greater Serbia’ was used by the
Prosecution only in the Croatia indictment, because during the investigation into events in
Croatia a number of witnesses spoke specifically of the Greater Serbia territorial designs Serbs
wanted to achieve there. For the most part, though, the Prosecution argued that Milošević had
espoused Greater Serbia ideology without using the term, because he was aware of its negative
connotation and association with violence. His rhetoric in the late 1980s and the platform of the
SPS, founded in 1990, reflected an ideological paradigm that identified the protection of Serbs
living outside of Serbia as a priority and claimed they faced threats from the majority ethnic
groups in Croatia, BiH, and Kosovo.
An important question for the Prosecution was: To what extent did the more euphemistic terms
used by Milošević and his associates – such as “All Serbs in a Single State” or “the right of the
Serb people to self-determination” – reference something akin to the historical concept of
Greater Serbia? Arguing that if a self-determination principal were applied to Serbs, Serbian
territory would indeed expand, bringing the same desired result, the Prosecution introduced the 398 Intercept of Conversation between Radovan Karadžić and Budimir Košutić, 7 February 1992, Exhibit P613.171a. 399 Testimony of Čedomir Popov (16 December 2004), 34595.
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term ‘de facto Greater Serbia’ to describe the Ideology espoused by Milošević. The Prosecution
coined the term a ‘de facto Greater Serbia’ in order to stress that there was not a single fully-
articulated overall plan from the very start but that the plan changed with changing
circumstances, affected by the actions of the other SFRY republics or the actions of the
International Community to which Serbia had to respond by changing its original territorial
designs.400
An important question for the Prosecution was: To what extent did the more euphemistic terms
used by Milošević and his associates – such as “All Serbs in a Single State” or “the right of the
Serb people to self-determination” – reference something akin to the historical concept of
Greater Serbia? And this rhetorical question is a useful point of departure for understanding
events that took place in Serbia between 1987 and 1999, because it was the size and shape of a
future Serb state that was at the core of Serbian politics.
A Centralised Yugoslavia or a Serb State?
While preparing for its cross-examination of Ratko Marković, the Prosecution stumbled upon a
1992 article he had authored in the law journal Pravni život (“Legal Life”) on the unresolved
issue of Serbian statehood. If not for Marković’s political engagement on the side of Milošević,
his article would probably have been lost in oblivion given the limited number of readers such
specialist journals typically have. But, because Marković appeared as a Defence witness, the
Prosecution saw the article as evidence of advanced planning by Serbian political and intellectual
elites under Milošević’s leadership.401
The article, “The Constitutional Status of Serbia and her Choice for a Joint State with
Montenegro,” was published in the first quarter of 1992, coinciding with the foundation of the
400 Prosecution Response to Amici Curiae Motion for Judgment of Acquittal Pursuant to Rule 98 bis, 04 May 2002, §262. 401 Marković was a Professor of Constitutional Law who had offered his legal knowledge and skills to Milošević for use in drafting amendments to the Serbian Constitution in 1990, the RSK Statute in 1991, and the FRY Constitution in 1992. He was an active SPS politician and became Deputy Prime Minister of Serbia in 1998 – a critical time for resolution of the Kosovo crisis – and was one of the principle negotiators present at the failed Rambouillet talks in February 1999. Marković’s academic work and his involvement in the drafting of important constitutional texts, together with journal articles he wrote in the 1990s, proved to be of significant probative value for establishing the real goals of the Serbian political and military leadership at that time, notwithstanding his attempts in court to minimise the importance of the role he played.
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FRY – the federation of Serbia and Montenegro – and gave a comprehensive account of the
history of the Serb national question, unveiling the two principal alternatives for statehood
pursued between 1987 and 2000 by Serbian leadership under Milošević: a centralised Yugoslav
federation or an ethnically-defined state that would unite all Serbs.402 Marković preferred a
federal state because of the ethnically-mixed population of the former Yugoslavia. He explained
that although there were territories in which one nation was a majority, there were also enclaves
populated by one nation and surrounded on all sides by other nations. He recognised, too, that in
some territories, no nation had a majority, and he proposed a joint state of all Yugoslav nations
organised as a federal state. It was significant that Marković advocated a federation with non-
Serb nations and rejected a confederation as historically outdated.403 The alternative he outlined
was an enlarged Serbia; an independent and sovereign state that would consist of all the
territories with a Serb majority, which would need to be connected territorially. He
acknowledged that connecting Serb majority territories with Serbia would necessitate the
inclusion of territories with a non-Serb majority, bringing a risk and high probability of war,
which he appreciated would expose Serbia to condemnation and sanctions by the international
community.404
The Prosecution saw Marković’s article as significant because he was not just an academic and
constitutional expert, but was also an active politician. As a member of the SPS, he served from
1994 to 2000 as Deputy Prime Minister of Serbia. In the introductory footnote that had
accompanied his article, Marković was introduced as someone who had worked directly on
drafting the Constitution of the joint state of Serbia and Montenegro, and who could inspire
consideration of the constitutional status of Serbia and of Serbia’s attempts to achieve a gradual
unification of all Serb territories and people.405 The Prosecution suggested to Marković that this
footnote implied the creation of an enlarged Serbia with which other Serb areas could join.
Marković protested, saying that it was the journal’s editorial board, not he, who wrote the note.
He went on to say that there were no efforts to create a Greater Serbia and that everything had
been done by Serbia to remain within Yugoslavia. Explaining his position further, he stated that 402 For the article as written in B/C/S, see: Ratko Marković, “Državnopravni Položaj Srbije i Njeno Opredelenje za Zajedničku Državu sa Crnom Gorom,” Pravni život, 42, no. 3-4 (1992). For the English translation, see: Ratko Marković, “Constitutional Status of Serbia and Her Choice for Joint State with Montenegro,” Exhibit P824a. 403 Ratko Marković, “Constitutional Status of Serbia...” Exhibit P824a, 3-4. 404 Ibid., 4. 405 Ibid., 1.
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Serbs did not wish to be absorbed into a Croatian or Bosnian state, but wanted to “remain in the
state they had lived in.”406 But Serbian elites were in fact indifferent toward Yugoslavia, as
Dobrica Ćosić expressed when he explained to Karadžić in 1991 that the attempt to unify the
South Slavs had already failed and the unification of Serbs was the next stage, yet to be
achieved.407
In the chapters that follow, the stages of planning identified in Chapter 1 as comprising five key
goals will be explored. The first goal – the centralisation of Serbia – reflected the ideology of the
SANU Memorandum and was a precursor to other developments that ensued once Milošević
took power in Serbia. The events described in the next chapter correlate to the rise of Serb
nationalism and of Milošević as the leader of Serbs, as well as to the articulation of a political
programme focused on “Serbs outside of Serbia,” and provide historical and political context for
understanding the phases of Milošević’s planning that followed.
406 Testimony of Ratko Marković (24 January 2005), 35526-35527. 407 Intercept of Conversation between Radovan Karadžić and Dobrica Ćosić, 11 November 1991, Exhibit P613.113a.